


What Doesn't Kill You

by ladycyon



Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, April and Casey's wedding, Hurt No Comfort, One-Sided Attraction, Pining, Raph Needs A Hug, Raphael has issues, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-20 00:37:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17012184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladycyon/pseuds/ladycyon
Summary: Watching your best friend get married should be a joyous occasion. So why does Raphael feel like this?





	What Doesn't Kill You

It was a lovely wedding; everyone said so. A beautiful gossamer and taffeta affair, the bridesmaids in pastels and the groomsmen’s ties dyed to match. And April all in white, more radiant than they’d ever seen her. She sauntered down the aisle, train stretched behind her like wings.

Even Casey was in full form. He looked smart in his penguin tuxedo and for once he’d actually managed to tame the wildness of his hair. He waited at the altar with a limitless smile and eyes that were uncharacteristically shiny and bright. If anyone had asked he would have told them it was the best, most terrifying moment of his life. 

Far above the pews, among the shadows of the church balcony, five figures watched the ceremony silently.

Four of them smiled.

The last of them ground his teeth.

If anyone had asked he would have told him it was the most devastating moment of his life.

It was a lovely wedding.

\--

They had decided upon a dry reception, if only because Casey’s closest uncle was a notorious drunk. That lasted less than an hour before someone had spiked the punch. The caterer was 20 minutes late. Casey had to dance with April’s mother and he was so nervous he accidentally placed his hands on her rear and wanted to melt into the floor he was so mortified.

And the bride kept disappearing. 

It took a while for anyone to notice, since she wasn’t gone long, but it shouldn’t be hard to spot the only person in white, it really shouldn’t. And since some people did not prefer punch, they were more astute at spotting such discrepancies. Great Aunt Maggie swore she saw her abscond with five plates of cake, but since she liked to tell stories and was no longer quite in her right mind, no one really believed this. Like she could ever fit in that dress if that were true.

\--

They greeted her with cheers and hugs and smiles. They told her how beautiful she was. They told her how happy they were for her. She slipped in and out of their private party all night, lingering longer and longer as time progressed.

Eventually the eldest of them had to ask.

“April you seem to be spending more and more time away from your reception, why is this?”

“Oh it’s kind of a disaster out there, it’s just nice to get away.”

“Casey’s uncle?”

“The drunk one?”

“Yeah.” April sighed.

“And Casey,” she admitted. Those two made quite the obnoxious pair. She was going to strangle whoever poisoned her punch, mark her words.

“Just needed a time out, but you’re right, I should be getting back.”

She slipped away again. 

Four pieces of cake slowly - or quickly - disappeared and the last piece got smashed into a pulp across a white porcelain plate shaped like a rose. 

“You gonna eat that?” his brother asked.

He wasn’t.

He shoved the plate away from himself and stood abruptly. He needed some fresh air. Without a word he escaped to the roof.

They let him go.

\--

They weren’t right for each other. How come it seemed like he was the only one that could see it?

That wasn’t fair, he should be happy for his best friend. He should be happy for both of them. This was supposed to be a celebration and more importantly, it wasn’t about him.

He should go back. He should get the hell over it. He shouldn’t feel like this in the first place, whatever the hell this was. He still wasn’t quite sure. But he knew it really wasn’t something he should be feeling, not for his best friend.

But he didn’t go back.

Nobody saw him for 3 days.

\--

He bit off more than he could chew and then chewed it anyways. His face was a bloody pulp and his knuckles were split. The odds were on the impossible side of dicey, but all he felt was an infinite blackness and a desperate need to make someone else hurt, to manifest something he couldn’t explain into the physical. 

Fists, he understood. Busted lips, cracked shells, those were rote. What he couldn’t handle was the black hole of emotions that was ripping him apart without even bothering to first introduce themselves.

He could fight a hundred purple dragons and he’d never expel that much poison from his veins, it would kill him surely. 

\--

Bonfires burn through fuel quickly and, likewise, so did he. Exhausted, he crawled away to lick his wounds. He calmed down, cleaned himself up, went home.

He shrugged it off. Buried it deep. 

Life went on. He trained, he ate, he slept. He picked on Mikey, bickered with Leo, debated with Don. He tried not to remember the sensation of plummeting facefirst through space, the acute knowledge that nothing would be the same again. He developed a fantastic charade.

He only broke character when he was breaking faces. Sometimes when he threw a punch or rammed a knee into a bad guy’s gut he let a little bit of the poison seep out. DOA statistics at the city hospitals were on the rise.

Add one more thing to the list of shit he didn’t dare to think about.


End file.
